Samsung’s Tizen OS is considered one of the best operating systems for smartwatches. However, the South Korean firm appears to be planning to ditch Tizen in favor of Google’s Wear OS, at least according to the latest rumors. These rumours have first started back in 2018 – this is when the company had replaced ‘Gear’ branding with Galaxy. Now, these latest rumours seem to confirm the fact that future Samsung devices will have Wear OS rather than the Tizen OS.
We are not exactly sure why Samsung would want to move over to the Wear OS for their smartwatches. However, it could be due to the fact that Samsung wants to deepen the partnership that the company has with Google. As well as this, the Tizen OS had lacked many third-party apps and services. With Samsung’s growth in the wearable market, this could be a good move to further boost sales.
Hints towards Wear OS in the next Samsung Wearable
An APK teardown of the latest version of the Galaxy Wearable app by Android Police’s Max Weinbach reveals two codenames: Fresh and Wise. These codenames are connected to Samsung’s next-generation smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch Active 4. They will reportedly come in two sizes—40/41mm and 44/45mm—and two variants: Bluetooth and cellular.
A new plugin with the codename ‘water’ was also found in the APK file, and it is reportedly Samsung’s compatibility layer for Wear OS. A reference to ‘newos’ was also found in the Galaxy Wearable application file. All of this points towards Samsung preparing to launch the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch Active 4 smartwatches running Google’s Wear OS. The upcoming watches are expected to be launched sometime in Q2 2021.
